Faculty Excellence in Research Award Presented to Milton L. Lee

Milton L. Lee is the first recipient of the Reed M. Izatt and James J. Christensen Faculty Excellence in Research Award.

Dr. Milton L. Lee received a B.A. Degree in Chemistry from the University of Utah in 1971 and a Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from Indiana University in 1975. He spent one year (1975-76) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a Postdoctoral Research Associate before taking a faculty position in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Brigham Young University, where he is presently the H. Tracy Hall Professor of Chemistry. Dr. Lee is author or co-author of over 500 scientific publications. Since 1980, he has given over 700 presentations on various aspects of his research, of which approximately one-third were invited lectures at major conferences and symposia. He is a member of the Scientific Committee for the International Symposium on Capillary Chromatography. Dr. Lee is best known for his research in capillary separations and mass spectrometry detection.

Dr. Lee’s current research activities cover several diverse areas including electric field gradient focusing of proteins, high speed thermal gradient gas chromatography, polymer monolithic column technology for liquid chromatography, sampling and concentration of target organic compounds in air, thermochemolysis/methylation of microorganisms for generation of characteristic biomarkers, toroidal ion trap mass spectrometry, and fluidic sieving of nano-particles. His research is mostly interdisciplinary in nature, involving faculty and students in Chemistry, Chemical Engineering, Statistics, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and Microbiology.

Professor Lee is also an entrepreneur and has been involved in transferring technology from his university research laboratory to the private sector. In 1984, he co-founded Lee Scientific to manufacture and market super-critical fluid chromatographic instrumentation, and in 1991 he co-founded Sensar Corporation to manufacture and market unique time-of-flight mass spectrometric instrumentation. In addition, Dr. Lee acquired ownership of the Journal of Microcolumn Separations in 1991 and became the publisher as well as an editor for the next 8 years. He is listed as a co-inventor on 20 issued or pending patents. His most recent company is Torion Technologies Inc. which offers the world’s smallest and most portable Gas Chromatograph-Mass Spectrometer System. It is a small, high-speed capillary gas chromatograph coupled to a miniature toroidal ion trap mass spectrometer (TMS), which provides rapid, high resolution separation and sensitive and selective detection of a wide variety of compounds at unit mass resolution over a range of 50 – 500 m/z.